A while beck someone sold a brochure about the Sukhoi-Gulfstrem supersonic business jet, the S-21. This concept, dating from the early 90’s, was a failed attempt to build a corporate-jet sized SST. While Gulfstream eventually dropped out, Sukhoi kept going until around 2012. The design changed substantially as time went by, but the realities of the economics of supersonic small aircraft around the turn of the century doomed the idea.
Just released, the March 2021 rewards for APR Patrons and Subscribers. Included this month:
Diagram/art: a large format scan of an artists concept of the XC-14. This was printed with a large number of signatures; they seem to be Boeing engineers.
Document 1: “Project Hummingbird.” An FAA document summarizing the characteristics of STOL and VTOL aircraft circa 1961, including bogh built and proposed types. This was scanned from a clean original!
Document 2: “The Thor Missile Story.” Old, old, incredibly old school media… a film strip propaganda piece about the statues of the Thor IRBM.
CAD diagram: the WWII era German DFS 228 rocket powered high altitude recon plane, proposed operational version.
If this sort of thing is of interest, sign up either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
From the National Archives, a few photos dated 1979 of a Lewis Research Center model of a “Tanker Airplane.” *FAR* higher resolution versions of the photos are available at the links.
And…
That’s certainly an unusual configuration. If it hadn’t originated at NASA, I’d think it was a college students design project. But then… there’s one more photo which might shed a little bit of light onto the subject:
Huh.
The text on the wing reads:
To
LRC from LeRC
November 8(?) 1979
This would seem to be some sort of a gag gift from Lewis Research Center to Langley Research Center, but the details of what, who, and why are not available to me. If anyone can shed light, please do so.
A video on the Douglas ICARUS/Ithacus, a 1960’s concept for a rocket vehicle to lob 1200 Marines anywhere on the planet in 45 minutes:
This video is based in large part on the article I wrote and illustrated in Aerospace projects Review issue V2N6, AVAILABLE HERE.
Why not sign on for the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon, why not? You’ll not only help make sure that this sort of research is done, you’ll get a fat stack of monthly rewards int he form of aerospace documentation.
Somehow or other, yet another YouTube video has been produced on the giant nuclear powered Lockheed CL-1201. Seems strange that after all this time this rather obscure design is suddenly getting traction… it’s almost as if YouTubers watch and copy each other. Wheird.
Anyway, *imagine* my surprise to find that the video has one of my copyrighted diagrams in it, without attribution, lightly modified and dumbified. Huh.
Video diagram:
My diagram, taken from Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N3 and US Transport Projects #4:
Yay, I guess? Would be nice if people made some effort to acknowledge where their stuff comes from.
This design has appeared here before… once as a piece of art from Life magazine, and once as an issue of US Transport Projects. This was a very early, very preliminary notional concept for a passenger carrying supersonic aircraft; whether it would have technically worked is debatable, but almost assuredly it would have been a financial disaster. It would have consumed large quantities of fuel and dropped sizable rocket units to fly a small number of passengers a relatively limited distance at a relatively low supersonic speed. Still: everything has to start from somewhere.
A video (made with a few contributions from yours truly, and, yes, attributed as such within the video) describing the 1970s Boeing design for an ICBM-carrying airliner, the MC-747. This is described and illustrated in US Bomber Projects issue 21, AVAILABLE HERE.
An interesting idea to be sure, but an unsafe one. Were one of these aircraft to go down for whatever reason, the results would be No Damned Good. Almost certainly the warheads would not go nuclear, but it’s always possible that the combo of the crash, the burning jet fuel and the solid rocket propellant merrily burning away might cause the chemical explosives in the warheads to go off, potentially scattering plutonium all over hither and yon. Worse still would be if the plutonium got sprinkled with the solid propellant and the plutonium combusted, scattering not just chunks and bits of plutonium, which would be bad enough, but clouds of plutonium oxide or plutonium chloride.
Perhaps more dangerous would be the Soviet reaction. They’d be in a constant state of freaking out every time one of these took to the sky, and they probably would have difficulty telling an MC-747 from an E-4 or a civilian 747. And, of course, they’d have to have their own. the AN-124 would be the logical choice for an ICBM carrier, and chances are good they’d do as good of a job with it as they did with Chernobyl, the Kursk or the Polyus.
APR Patrons and Subscribers today helped crowdfund the purchase of a Boeing blueprint, an inboard profile diagram of the 2707-300 SST. An overly expensive item became reasonably affordable, and will be provided to each of the funders as high resolution scans in full color (and cleaned-up grayscale).
If you’d like to be involved in helping to preserve this sort of aerospace rarity, consider singing up for the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon or the Monthly Historical Documents Program.
A video about the Boeing Resource Carrier designed to fly oil from far northern Canadian sites to ports. One wonders if this concept could be employed today to take the place of the recently cancelled Keystone pipeline…
More about the RC-1 is available in US Transport Projects #5.
As is known far and wide, I’m not well known. What little fame I have is largely bound up is the aerospace history research and illustration I’ve done; I’m *hoping* that when the two books I’m working on now get published things will change a bit (well, I hope my *work* gains a bit of fame; I’ve little use for *me* becoming famous). Still: while I toil in obscurity, I find that the products of my labor do have a tendency to pop up here and there. Usually when the diagrams I’ve created are used by someone else there’s some sort of attribution… but not always. There’s little to nothing that can be done about that, of course. Just sorta grit my teeth and move on.
So I watched this video, gritted my teeth and will, I suppose, move on. Note that it uses diagrams I created for Aerospace Projects Review issue V1N3 and US Transport Projects #04. What I suppose was funny was that when I started watching the video I largely *expected* to see my diagrams to show up in it… and, yup, there they are. As of this writing, the video has had about half a million views, not a one of which read where the diagrams came from.
UPDATE: After comms with the video maker: it seems he received the diagrams from someone else claiming them as their own. There have been revisions to the description including proper attribution. If this all pans out, there may be collaborations in the future.
